Nobel Thoughts: On the 2006 Prize for Chemistry

There was a flutter of excitement earlier this week within the geeky world of scientists as the 2006 Nobel Prizes were announced for the basic sciences (Physics and Chemistry) and Physiology or Medicine categories. Given the prestige of these awards and the secretive manner in which winners are chosen, there is always some speculation about potential winners and subsequent post-announcement interest in, as well as scrutiny of, the awardees. Fellow Desicritic M(Tread Softly Upon) has already written about the winners this year for Medicine or Physiology. I will touch upon the Chemistry prize, which was awarded to Roger Kornberg of Stanford University, for resolving the machinery that decodes information from our genes.

As most people are aware, long strands of molecules called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acids) store the genetic information of life. But the real work-horses within living cells are the proteins. The flow of information from DNA to proteins happens through intermediate molecules called messenger RNA (mRNA). This is the 'Central Dogma of Life' proposed almost fifty years ago by Watson and Crick (the same people who elucidated the double-helical structure of DNA). Kornberg's contribution, in very simple terms, was to obtain very detailed 'snapshots' of the molecular architecture and chemical processes involved in the creation of mRNA from DNA. The work has shed light on how this mechanism, called 'transcription', is regulated in living cells. Since aberrations in the transcription process can lead to various human diseases such as cancer, it is essential to have a detailed understanding of this event.

To obtain the 'molecular pictures', Kornberg used a well established but relatively elaborate and challenging technique called X-ray crystallography, which involves bombarding crystalline forms of the molecular complex with X-rays. Incidentally, the basic theories behind X-ray crystallography were developed by the father and son team of William and Lawrence Bragg, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics (in 1915) for their work. It remains the only instance of a parent and offspring winning the coveted award jointly. The mention of the Braggs is appropriate in this context since Roger Kornberg's father, Arthur Kornberg also won the Medicine Nobel in 1959 for research in a very connected field, discovering how the basic information molecules of life, DNA and RNA, are synthesized and assembled. There have been several other such cases of father and son winning the Nobel Prize separately and one instance where both parents and their daughter have won: Marie (Physics 1903 and Chemistry 1911) and Pierre Curie (Physics 1903) and their daughter Irene Joliet-Curie.

Incidentally, Irene Joliet-Curie won the Prize in Chemistry (1935) along with her husband, Frederic, making it somewhat of a family tradition. One wonders how the dinner conversation goes in such families! However, in a PBS interview Roger Kornberg said that he had "a normal family life" and "wouldn't suggest that it differed in an important way from anybody else's."

After the announcement of this year's prize, there was some disgruntled murmurs about the Nobel Prize in Chemistry being awarded for research that was essentially biological. One should point out that quite a few recent (within the last ten-fifteen years) laureates in Chemistry have won for contributions towards solving biological problems. However, firstly, this is indicative of the blurring of barriers between the physical, chemical and biological sciences. Modern biomedical research increasingly relies on a combination of chemical, physical, mathematical and engineering tools for its investigations.

For example, the x-ray crystallography techniques used by Kornberg has received tremendous impetus from developments in computational sciences and robotics. Secondly, in a more philosophical manner, one could argue that biology after all is really nothing more than the 'chemistry of life'.

On a final note, I would like to point out both the awards for Physiology or Medicine and Chemistry this year has been for investigations into regulation of genetic information and that both involve relatively recent breakthroughs, the prize-winning work having taken place within the last five to eight years. These are relatively quick decisions by the Nobel committee, which usually waits many years for the research to be validated and its impact to be appropriately judged before rewarding it. Both these facts underscore the far-reaching impact of this area of research.